You've actually almost exactly described how PiBakery works - except that PiBakery obviously can write the image as well. Once the image is written, PiBakery just writes some scripts into the /boot/PiBakery/ directory, which is checked by a systemd startup script, and executed.
And if you want to create custom blocks to add in to PiBakery for your own tools/scripts, you're welcome to do that! I have a guide on the PiBakery website - www.pibakery.org/docs/contribute.html - that describes this process that you can look at if you want.
Thanks, and yes, the whole ideas was to make it that anyone who's used Scratch (which covers a lot of the Pi community) would be able to instantly use PiBakery.
Are there any plans to support different versions of Raspbian (ie. Jessie Light)? Setting up headless pis with only a WiFi dongle (for other people to then use) is something I've often had to do, and setting up that initial connection with a PSK and SSID can be a pain - this would be great for that, though I suspect you'd need some sort of compatibility information added to the block json files.
Having support for Raspbian Lite is possibly the most requested feature right now (along with a block for static IP), and I'm working on that right now. Follow @PiBakery on twitter to get notified of when that update is released!
I have none, except that I felt surprisingly happy while seeing the screenshot on your website. If OSes have been like this from start, many people would be "power users" instead of locked down consumers.
Really nice idea & well executed. I might have to look into this one as I have an art project (for want of a better word) to execute on the pi. I want to make it so that anyone can setup a timelapse, upload it to youtube and then post the link to an aggregating site. TimeLapse the world ;) ... I have it working for me, but it wants more ;)
I see it's not possible to allow user-configuration when the block is being installed, is that something on your road map? Is it possible to have any sort of periphery checking (e.g. does the pi have a camera attached).
Not that it'll matter much either way, I mean you can just set the block up and have it fail gracefully, but I thought I'd ask.
Originally I wanted to have "if" blocks and reporters for whether the Pi had a camera or not, whether it was connected to the internet, etc., but I decided fairly on that this would overcomplicate PiBakery considerably, and so I went with the blocks failing (hopefully gracefully!) instead.
If I have some free time, I may experiment with adding "if" blocks in - although the main disadvantage is that this wouldn't be backwards compatible with previous PiBakery versions, and that's fairly important to me. But I'll see how things go.
Currently there is no way for me to push updates for the code to PiBakery, but there is a way for me to push block updates. I guess I just don't want the 1500+ people that have downloaded PiBakery to have to redownload PiBakery to get new blocks, if it's possible.
That said, I am looking into an "if" block and then reporter blocks for it, and it may happen in the future.
I take you start from the raspbian base image and customize your rootfs from there.
Maybe take a look at the various debian bootstrap methods then you can create minimal sd-images and even apply some changes to the root fs and partition table before booting the rpi.
This way you could implement encryption of the root partition or specification of partition size etc.
Exactly, I start with the Raspbian Full image and slightly modify it to work with PiBakery. If you want to see exactly what I have changed, I have a GitHub repo of that as well - https://github.com/davidferguson/pibakery-raspbian .
I will be doing the same process with Raspbian Lite (as having a minimal image is the most wanted feature) and allowing users to choose whether they want to use Full or Lite when writing to SD.
I didn't find the repo for the website (I even checked for the gh-pages branches), but if I had found it I would have opened a PR to fix http://www.pibakery.org/contribute.html where there is a 200px Octocat but using an 800px image. One can actually watch it draw in as it loads. That's not only suboptimal for your mobile users, but also a pet peeve of mine. :-)
I'd like to see an option to download just the PiBakery stuff, for those users who already have a Raspbian ISO. Although I do see why Raspbian is included with it (project is geared more towards non-technical users) - it would still be nice to have a O/S-less download option for people who are on metered 'net connections or are using their smartphone data plan, etc. I realize this means having to create a tool or script to combine PiBakery with a pre-existing Raspbian ISO, but I don't see that being all that difficult. Maybe a tool that outputs a bash script or something that will run on first-boot of a default Raspbian install (just spitballing ideas here)?
Sadly PiBakery uses a slightly customised version of Raspbian, so simply using the "standard" Raspberry Pi one wouldn't work. If you know how, you can make the customisations to Raspbian yourself - the changes I made are on the PiBakery-Raspbian GitHub page: https://github.com/davidferguson/pibakery-raspbian
Oh cool! I'm glad you kept that information & data logged and separated out. I can see that being incredibly useful and a great starting point for anyone looking to create some sort of script like that. I wish I had the time, it sounds like it would be interesting to try 'n do. I read further up in the thread that you will in fact soon be supporting the 'Lite' flavor of Raspbian as well -- this should ease up on the download size quite a bit for users who have bandwidth concerns. Great project by the way, thanks for creating it and putting it out there.
It's good to have the explanation for beginners, but for people that just want to get the software (and kind of know what they're doing) there should be a bigger button in addition to the text link. :)
I'm currently waiting for my Apple and Windows code signing certificates, which will mean I can ditch the while "How to install" pages and just have the binaries install when you click on the big button on the main downloads page. Sadly this seems to be taking a while (I've been waiting on my Windows certificate over 2 weeks now) but I'm hoping I'll get them soon!
I like this but I wonder why it needs a download. This should be an as-a-service thing where I can customize my setup online, store it in local storage and then just download either the complete image or a small script that builds the image.
The image itself is customized; it's not a vanilla copy of Raspbian. So, no matter what, you'll end up downloading ~1GB of data (less, when he's got the Lite version built).
One benefit of this, over doing it online: you can download the file+program, disconnect from the net, and customize as many versions of the image as you'd like without extra bandwidth use. There are a lot of Pi users with limited internet access.
Another benefit: Doing it online implies at least a two step process. Go to the site and build a setup (with either an account system or an import/export feature to save progress and make it available for re-use), tell it to build the image, download it, and use a separate program to flash. Doing it through a native app eliminates the separate program and the question of whether or not you need to create an account on their service. Plus, when their site goes down eventually, I've still got a working, independent program. When they introduce a new version, I've got the option to stick with what I've got or upgrade (if I judge it to actually be an upgrade).
Web apps have their place. This thing is one that makes more sense as a local app to me.
Love the idea as well! I'm not able to test this right now, but I was wondering if there's a block for setting up an encrypted Pi? If so: awesome! If not: are there plans to implement it?
It's not a block I had previously considered, but any block can be added in!
What exactly do you mean by encrypted pi? The entire SD encrypted, one partition encrypted, or something else? If you have a script that does something like this, feel free to submit a block for it (guide at http://www.pibakery.org/docs/contribute.html) or send me the script and I can add it in for you.
Either the whole disk or the user partition, such that when the device gets stolen no useful information can be extracted from it. I don't have a script; I used berryboot to encrypt the SD card in the past. I'm not a good coder but I'll try to make something work
Adding in your own image will (almost certainly) never be supported, but I am right now adding in Raspbian lite, as that seems to be a universally wanted feature. Follow @PiBakery on twitter for news on when I release it!
